


Worlds apart

by emulikule



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, College/University, Fantasy, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Magic, Modern AU, Slow Burn, everyone's around 18-19, minor depictions of violence, running from authority
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2020-02-16 15:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18694120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emulikule/pseuds/emulikule
Summary: The start of a new semester and a semi-independent life away from your parents? All part of the initiation of becoming an adult.Getting into an accident while going to your first lectures? Could be avoidable, but still a possibility.Waking up in a way too realistic dream and suddenly getting attacked by an angry creature? Probably not very normal.Well, at least Axel couldn’t complain that he didn’t have an interesting first day of a new school year.





	1. As though I met you in a dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xShieru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xShieru/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up—the schooling system is more of a European type, but it’s not too important to the plot.  
> Also don’t worry about some of the tags, everything’s gonna be fine~  
> mostly

_The bright summer sun was dimmed in the sea of trees, its rays barely permeating the thick foliage above the two boys as they wandered through the forest. Distant birdsongs echoed in their ears and everything around them felt like it was filled with life, the soft rustle of the leaves being disturbed by the gentle wind and small critters making their way to their own unknown destinations. It was a lot cooler in the shade of the trees as well, taking away the sweltering heat of the season._

_“How much further do you want to go?” asked the red haired one, still gleefully following his friend as he led them through the winding forest paths._

_“Until I find the perfect one,” came a focused answer from the boy further ahead. He was craning his head to look around their surroundings, intently searching for something only he could recognize._

_“How perfect does a tree you want to climb have to be?” the first boy’s voice barely contained his laughter. He felt it was silly to be so fixated on something so arbitrary but he didn’t want to dampen his friend’s mood._

_“Well, the branches need to be low enough for us to be able to climb it, but I also want it to be tall so that we can see as far as we can from its top.”_

_“Hmm, sounds reasonable, I guess.”_

_“Look at you, using big words.”_

_The redhead grinned, putting his hands behind his head. “That’s what you can look forward to once you start going to school too. Sooo fun.”_

_“At least then I’d get to see you more, it’s kinda lonely when you’re in class for half of the day— Oh!” the blond boy stopped in his tracks and pointed ahead of him. “I think this is the one!”_

_Before the two stood what seemed to be a pretty old tree, its branches spanning far and wide, the top disappearing among its own leaves. Just like the boy had wished, a couple of branches were low enough for the two of them to reach if they put a little effort into it. “Come on, help me up!” he said as he ran towards the tree and stopped beneath an offshoot that hung the lowest._

_“That’s what I get for being slightly older,” the other feigned a sigh, reaching his friend and crouching down for him to use him as a leverage._

_“No, that’s what you get for being_ slightly _taller.”_

 _The_ definitely _taller boy straightened his back after his friend got off and let the other help him up the branch, the two of them now ready to begin their quest to scale the magnificent tree that, against their small statures, seemed to be never ending._

_There were plenty of branches near each other to let them climb without too much trouble, both helping the other if they saw that their friend needed it. The bottom ones were sturdy enough to hold them both, but as the two got higher and higher their breadth steadily shrunk until only one of the boys could comfortably stay on a single branch. This didn’t deter them, though, and they kept making their way to the top._

_However, as the sun’s rays began breaking through the thinning foliage more, it became harder to keep a solid grip on the branches near the peak, a stark contrast between them and the ones that had first led the boys’ way._

_“Hey, maybe this is enough?” called out the redhead, slightly below his friend. He had stopped in his tracks and was taking a breather, but it didn’t seem like he could easily go on climbing anymore on these thin branches._

_“Maybe,” his friend answered, though he did so as he still continued to reach for another offshoot. “It’s not as high as I would have wanted, but I guess you’re ri—”_

_His voice cut off the moment his foot slipped, his body instantly panicking and trying to grab onto something. But all he found was a small branch, cracking under the full weight of a child as he held onto it, and plummeting together with him towards the ground._

_Everything seemed like it shifted into slow motion as the other boy watched his friend fall past him, a look of shock on his face that had yet to turn into terror. Without thinking, the older boy reached out his hand to grab at the other, all thought about his own safety leaving his mind._

_“Roxas!”_

* * *

 

“Axel.”

The person in question only hummed an answer, still staring off into the distance through the car window. The scenery flashed before his eyes, though nothing caught his attention, all of it blurring into a mess of colour.

“Did you actually hear me this time or am I still speaking to a wall?”

At this he finally turned his head to look at his friend who was sitting at the wheel and giving him a side-eyed scowl. “Sure I did. Besides, I don’t think you could find a wall as interesting as me,” he gave his answer with a smirk.

“Could have fooled me,” Isa sighed and turned his attention back to the road. “Sure didn’t seem like it the first three times I called your name.”

Axel’s only response was a shrug, which he knew that even if Isa couldn’t see, he definitely expected it.

“As I was saying, _Axel_ , I know you had fun with the others taking all that time off to do god knows what in hell knows which places, but you can’t expect to space off like you’ve been doing now and still maintain a free place in your studies. You actually managed to get one, you should at least try to keep it.”

“Thanks, mom, I’ll keep that in mind,” Axel groaned, regretting accepting Isa’s offer to drive him to his university on his first day there. The guy had already been studying there for a year while Axel and a few of their other friends had taken the time to actually go have some fun before subjecting themselves to even more years of basically what came as an extension of school. He figured this lecturing was his friend’s way of making him feel guilty for not taking him along, even if it had been offered to him and it had been Isa’s choice not to go, but whatever. Who was keeping track anyway.

“So will you at least look for a job?”

 _Why bother?_ “Not yet. Figured I’d first settle in, get a feel for the pace, meet some new people and maybe then I’ll think about it.”

This didn’t seem to be the answer Isa would have liked as he turned slightly back to Axel again with his eyes narrowed. “Then you’ll just keep relying on your parents? You’re lucky already that they’re paying for your apartment’s rent, you could at least spend your own money on other expenses.”

“And that’s between me and my family.” Axel gave a glare of his own. “They’re happy that I got my grades up during the last few years of school and that I stopped getting in trouble as much, so they don’t mind me taking some time to adjust to a new lifestyle.”

“Then can you at least promise me that you will actually put the effort in to do so?” Isa asked, now almost fully turned to Axel in his seat.

Axel was about to retort, maybe give a snappy comeback how Isa barely seemed to have any kind of lifestyle of his own besides studying and working, but the words got stuck in his throat as his eyes focused on a sverwing car in a different lane. One that was now quickly heading their way.

“Isa!” he called, and his friend, seeing Axel’s wide eyes, immediately snapped his attention back to the road and towards the incoming vehicle. They had been driving through a somewhat secluded road, so it was easy to see the only other car veering right into them. Isa urgently turned the wheel, trying to evade the other driver, but the sudden motion of their own car turning made Axel lose his balance in his seat, the momentum throwing his head back towards the side window.

He felt it make contact with the glass, the hit almost exactly right on his temple. Before he could even register any pain, the world before his eyes went dark.

* * *

 

Pouding pain greeted Axel as he felt his consciousness slowly coming back to him. His head was screaming at him like after a good party that you couldn’t remember in the morning. No, scratch that, like after a horrible one that you dearly wished to forget.

He slowly opened his eyes to see…

More dark.

He blinked a couple more times just in case he had only fooled himself into thinking that he had opened his eyes, but all he saw was just a murky black.

 _Oh god, have I gone blind?!_ Panic rose inside his chest as he scrambled to get up and felt his hands touch something soft.

Wait, why was he lying down? Hadn’t he been in a car? Had Isa actually managed to somehow swerve his car so much that he ended up flying out of it? Nah, even in a car accident the dude would probably still manage to make it seem like everything had been planned out by some inexplicable means and get out unscathed.

Axel, on the other hand…

Well, he could at least tell that the softness beneath his fingers seemed like moss. He righted himself up on the spongy ground, slightly swaying as his head did not like him doing that, and blinked just a few more times to be sure. As he did that, he actually realized that he could make out a few shapes before him. It wasn’t that he had gone blind, as he had previously thought. No, this was a slightly different problem than that.

It was night time and he was in the middle of what seemed like a dense forest.

“What the fuck…?” he slowly exhaled, looking around the place now that his eyes had finally begun to adjust to the dark. He was pretty sure that Isa had not been driving them through the woods, unless he really was as unfocused as his friend was accusing him of. But even if he had, why was it now the middle of the night and all Axel could see stretched out before his eyes was just more trees and shrubbery?

A loud rumble caught his attention, followed by a quickly increasing sound of rustling. Axel spun on his heel, almost losing his balance with the movement due to his headache, and just as he steadied himself, the space before him exploded with the sound of breaking branches and heavy stomping. He found his breath catching in his throat for a second time in a short interval as an enormous black creature stood before him. The only way he could even discern where its figure ended was because of the yellow light that came from the animal’s(?) eyes.

The two of them stood at a standstill for what seemed like an eternity, Axel holding his breath in fear that even the slightest movement from him would bring the thing into a frenzy. The creature’s breath, however, came at steady intervals, making the boy scrunch up his face from trying to force himself not to gag at the horrific smell.

In that moment, the animal rose on its hind legs, letting out some sort of roar that seemed to make the whole forest shiver, and Axel, knowing that there was no way he would be safe if he stayed in the same spot, immediately darted to the side, narrowly avoiding the crushing of the creature’s two front legs as they landed right where he had been standing just a moment ago. He skidded to a halt as a tree came into view, and turned around only to see the thing ready itself back up to charge at him.

Axel avoided a few more attacks as he ran through the forest, but the animal was getting closer with each moment. In a bout of panic mixed with the unfamiliar place and his dark surroundings, he felt the ground underneath him slip from his feet. He quickly scrambled to turn around, his back hitting a tree as he tried to crawl away from the animal that was quickly shortening the distance between them.

As a last resort, or maybe only as an instinct to at least protect his face from being mauled, he crossed his arms in front of it and shut his eyes as hard as he could.

_This is it, huh? Never imagined I would die in a strange dark place with no clue how I got there and with something trying to kill me just because I probably pissed it off by existing._

_Figures._

Except the mauling never came.

What did happen, though, was a burst of pain erupting from Axel’s hands and a wave of heat washing over his arms and face. However, the pain wasn’t one that would come from your hands being chomped off. As Axel opened his eyes he was greeted with the sight of his hands on fire and the creature slowly backing away from the flame. It hurt like a bitch, but the upside was that however the fuck he had managed to catch himself on fire, at least it was working in scaring his attacker away.

Clenching his teeth from the pain, he quickly got up, his hands extended as far away from himself as possible, and booked it towards a direction that wasn’t occupied by a snarling black animal with demonic eyes. As he ran, he tried to fan his hands to make the fire go away. He slapped them against his clothing a couple of times and surprisingly that seemed to do the trick as the flames died out, leaving only a remnant of pain in their wake.

After he was sure that the animal wasn’t chasing him anymore, Axel stopped to eventually catch his breath. He wheezed unceremoniously, glad that there at least weren’t any people around to see him do that. Once his heartbeat had gone back somewhat to normal, he finally took some time to have his thoughts catch up to him.

“What the hell is going on here…?” he whispered to the comfortably warm air around him. Now that things had calmed down, he could see that this place looked pretty nice. The trees looked old and weathered, a gentle breeze of the night’s wind making their leaves rustle in a slow dance meant only for them. It also felt nice against his wounded palms.

He brought them up to inspect the damage, being surprised by the fact that even if it had looked like his whole hand had been on fire, only his palms were injured. His fingers were unscathed, and even the skin on his palms didn’t look nearly as damaged as he had expected it would be from being directly on fire for at least half a minute.

As Axel peered at his hands he also realized that his clothes looked different from what he had put on in the morning. He lifted his arms to look at his torso and pants, and was greeted with something he would have expected to see in a fantasy movie set in medieval times or something along those lines. The colours of his clothes were still similar to what he had worn, but their material and cut were definitely not something he would have bought on his own, or even known where to buy at that matter.

A thought then came to him that his hair felt different, even if he couldn’t place how he could feel that. It was something similar to how you feel after getting a new haircut, like something just wasn’t how you were used to it being. He gingerly brought his hand up to touch it, silently praying to any known deity that it was at least still there. An exhale of relief escaped him as he felt the strands underneath his fingers, but then a slow realization seeped in that they definitely weren’t shaped how he was used to.

Axel dragged his fingers through his long hair which he had worn without much change that day. No hairspray, no headbands or braids. He hadn’t felt like tinkering with it in the morning as he didn’t even have much time before Isa had to come pick him up. However, now it felt like he had used a volume increasing shampoo that did its work just a tad too well. He could feel it poofing out behind him, and even if his hair wasn’t the straightest on its own, it definitely didn’t cluster together in tufts like this. Though, at least, it still felt soft to his touch; not like a can of hairspray had exploded in front of his face and made everything stick in weird clumps.

_This is a dream, right? It has to be…_

The weird creature, his own odd appearance and the discrepancies in time and location. It all clearly pointed towards this being only a conjuring of his subconsciousness. And yet… the pain in his head and hands felt all too real. The ground beneath his feet and the wind caressing his face were all _too real_. He could even smell the aroma of the plants around him.

Scrunching up his face and groaning, Axel let go of this topic. If this was a dream, he would eventually wake up. If not, then he needed to find some people to help him out. He started walking in the same direction that he had run to, silently hoping this would all just end soon.

After a few minutes, he began seeing more in front of him, the faint moonlight finally managing to break through the towering foliage. He figured that the light he saw slightly further ahead was just a clearing where the moonlight could fully shine through, but as he got closer the thought came to him that it had a different quality to it. The colour was a soft teal and it grouped in small batches, almost like fireflies. Except it wasn’t moving. Axel might have found out that the light came from the flowers that grew on the forest floor, but at that moment his attention was directed elsewhere.

A person was crouched among the balls of light, their back turned towards Axel and obviously in the middle of doing something with the flowers. Their hair appeared fair, though it was hard to tell what colour exactly as the faint glow of the plants painted it a mixture of muted greens and blues.

“Hey there!” Axel called out, elated to see another person. Maybe they could tell him what this place was and even get him back to civilization.

He didn’t expect the person to snap up, seemingly completely startled by his voice. Their body made a sharp turn towards him and immediately positioned itself into an aggressive stance, two thin swords gleaming in the flowers’ light as they both pointed to Axel, who froze in his spot with his right hand extended in a wave that never happened.

He could see that the person in front of him was a boy, probably a similar age to him, but that information really didn’t help in his current situation. The look on his face was full of anger and disgust.

“Oh this is low,” he said with a snarl. “Even for you it’s too fucking low.”

“What…?” Axel breathed out, not sure if he should try to find out how he had offended this guy or just start running again. He unconsciously took a slight step forward, wanting to placate this clearly agitated person.

“Don’t move!” One of the swords rose up to point directly at Axel’s face. Though there was some distance between them, he somehow felt that it was right in front of him. The boy’s narrowed eyes pierced him with malice, making Axel’s chest sting.

The redhead couldn’t understand why everything in this place appeared to hate him. He felt like he needed to explain himself to the person pointing two weapons at him, but the words didn’t come. He could only think of taking another step closer and raising his hands in front of him as if approaching a startled animal.

However, he didn’t have enough time to even raise his hands halfway as a gust of strong wind knocked him back all the way into another tree, the back of his head smacking into it full force and stars erupting before his eyelids.

“I warned you,” a distant voice came, each syllable sounding further and further away as Axel sunk back into darkness.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Local student has a bad day. Just a really awful time


	2. Just keep smiling and maybe you won’t get killed

“Axel?” a voice called out to him but… no, it wasn’t the same one.

The boy groaned as he slowly opened his eyes to see Isa’s face in front of him, actually looking concerned. His head felt like it weighed a ton, though a nagging feeling ate at him that the pain didn’t originate from the side of it, but rather its back. He raised his right hand to clutch at it and hissed at the contact, immediately drawing his palm back and staring at it.

The skin was red and blistered in a few places.

“Are you alright?” Isa sounded a bit more relieved now that Axel had actually regained consciousness. Okay, now that was much weirder than his hands.

“I think,” he grunted an answer. “Though my head is killing me.”

Axel turned it towards his friend, still in the driver’s seat, only to see the other staring at him with a look of suspicion on his features. His eyes were fixed on Axel’s hand that had returned to gingerly touching the back of his head with his fingertips.

“Didn’t you hit it on the side window? You’re even bleeding a little near your temple.”

“Yeah, at least that’s what I remember,” Axel answered, more concerned with the pain than Isa’s odd questioning.

“Then why are you holding the back of it?” 

“Ah, I had a weird dream where I also hit it there. I think it just feels more painful there at the moment because of it.”

This didn’t seem to completely dispel Isa’s suspicions, but nonetheless he dropped the subject, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Well, you still talk like yourself, so maybe you didn’t hit it that hard. You were out for a few minutes and I was about to call emergency services on you, but you woke up.”

“How considerate of you,” Axel let out a low laugh. “So did you get hurt yourself? Is the car alright?”

“I’m fine and I think the car is too, but I’ll check on it.”

As Isa got out of the vehicle, Axel took the time to look around him. His friend had stopped at the side of the road and the other car was nowhere to be seen. They had definitely not been driving through the woods, but rather a small street littered here and there with a few houses. He saw a couple of people heading their way, most likely concerned bystanders. Isa stopped to talk with them and after a few moments returned to the car.

“It’s fine and the people saw the number of the other car, so they called in to warn about it.” He then looked back at Axel again, his eyes narrowing just a tad bit in an expression that was almost concern but could also have easily been mild annoyance. “Do you need me to drive you to the hospital?”

“Nah, I think I’m fine. Just got rattled a bit, that’s all,” Axel brushed it off, wanting to avoid that trip at any cost. 

“So do you still want to go to your first lectures?” Isa kept on pushing.

“Sure, why not,” the other answered almost in a mocking manner. “You did say I should focus more on it.”

“I’m not joking, Axel. I can at least drive you back home if you really don’t want to get checked out by a professional.”

This was probably the best he would get. Honestly, Isa was being relatively sweet, even if that word didn’t fit him very well. Axel sighed and slowly shook his head as not to make it hurt more. “No, I think I’ll be fine. Besides, it’s only gonna be a few of them. If I feel too bad I’ll just leave on my own.”

Isa pressed his lips into a thin line and began starting the car up again. “Alright, but if it does get bad then just call me. I don’t want you passing out on the sidewalk while attempting to make your way back to your apartment.”

“I should really get injured more often, you’re acting like a saint,” Axel grinned and saw Isa roll his eyes, but a miniscule smile tugged at his friend’s lips.

* * *

 

The lectures went without much fuss, pretty much what Axel had expected. Aside from what he had told Isa, he wasn’t feeling a hundred percent, so he had sat at the back and spaced out while the professors talked about the syllabus and whatever else they figured the students would need to know on the first week. 

He had taken a first aid kit from the car and disinfected the small wound on the side of his head, though while Isa wasn’t paying attention, he also grabbed the bandages to later tape up his hands in the uni bathrooms. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk about that just yet.

Axel had managed to get back home by himself even if Isa’s offer to drive him back had sounded pretty inviting. He figured he’d need to learn the bus schedules and the best ways to walk from the stop to his place, though it really wasn’t that far from the university, so he didn’t need to worry much about that.

Once he got back, he took off the bandages to look at his hands again. They felt sore and were still red, so he applied some aloe vera that he had in his relatively scarce medicine cabinet and put on some new bandages. He sat down on the edge of his bed and stared at the now bandaged palms for a few minutes.

_ I still can’t tell if it was a dream or not… _

Was it possible to somehow have something that happened to you in a dream be transferred to you in the real world? It could have been some weird placebo effect or something, but Axel wasn’t sure if it worked to this extent. 

“And that guy sure was pissed at me. I wonder what set him off?” he said to the empty room.

Axel spent the rest of the day cooped up and mindlessly browsing the internet. He had popped a few pills for his headache, but concentrating on something more mentally taxing just wasn’t in his near foreseeable future. The group chat of his school friends lit up near the evening with Demyx offering everyone to meet up the next day. They had seen each other just a few days ago, but Axel figured he didn’t have anything better to do at the moment, so he just thumbs upped the message and left the others to decide the when and where. 

When night finally came he didn’t stay up as long as he usually would have, blaming his fatigue on his headache. His bed was more than inviting, so Axel checked when he needed to get up in the morning, set his alarm and crashed, hoping to sleep the pain away.

And yet…

He awoke to the sounds of birds chirping and sunlight beaming right into his eyes. Axel shielded them with his hand and looked around in slight surprise. 

Yet again he found himself in a forest, sitting on the soft grass and leaning against a tree. In front of him was a small clearing filled with flowers, though they were all closed up. After a few more moments of looking around he realized that this was the same place as his previous dream, only now it was daytime. The other guy wasn’t anywhere to be found and Axel sat completely alone on the forest floor. 

He eventually stood up, dusting himself off and seeing that his clothes were again different, though now it looked like his nightshirt and sweatpants had gone through an extreme makeover that left them looking like unflattering bags draped over him, giving Axel the appearance of a street side beggar asking for a kind lord to spare him a copper coin. He grimaced at that, but it wasn’t like he had any choice or any spare clothing. Dejectedly, he began walking away from the flowers.

Now that he had the chance and could actually see what was around him, Axel took his time inspecting all of it. He had never been too into botany, but as he walked further and further he found that he couldn’t place any of the trees or plants that he passed by. They didn’t look too weird, but they also didn’t look like anything he had seen before, either in person or in books or media. He had yet to encounter any animals, though he wasn’t too keen on acting on that. If they were all like the thing he had seen the last time, he was more than happy to avoid every single one of them. 

Time ticked by as Axel walked aimlessly. At this point he was berating himself for never having taken any scout classes or just learning basic survival skills. He was sure the moss—was this even moss?—probably grew on a certain direction on the trees and that there was probably a way to use that information to find human civilization, but what guarantee did he have that this place played by normal rules and could he even hope that if he did meet more people they wouldn’t just try to kill him for some inexplicable reason?

And so he continued to walk.

Once the setting sun dyed the forest green into oranges and yellows and Axel was almost ready to just lay down on the grass again to get some sleep, he heard the unmistakable sounds of people. Somewhere further ahead at least several people were talking and there were some other background noises of action. As he was debating if he should try his luck and introduce himself or just avoid them and continue heading wherever he was going, he felt the cold and sharp touch of a blade at his throat.

“Who are you?” came a voice behind him.

_ Well, at least I don’t have to choose anymore. _

“Uhh, Axel?” he said, unsure if this was what the person wanted to know. 

“How did you even get here,  _ Axel _ ?” The voice didn’t sound angry, which was already a plus given his luck with this place, only slightly suspicious of him.

“I have no idea.” Axel decided to give a half truth. “I hit my head, woke up here and got tremendously lost with no clue where I even am.”

At this the blade retracted a bit, giving him more space to breathe. The person slowly shifted to stand in front of him, though they still had the weapon pointed at him. Axel saw a relatively young guy before him with slightly spiked silver hair and light armor. Now that he thought about it, the boy he had seen before also had his hair sticking up. He wanted to check his own hair again, but decided against that as he still had a blade trained on his neck.

_ What’s with this place and poofed up hair? _

“I’m not sure if I can believe that,” the guy narrowed his eyes at him, “but there doesn’t seem to be anyone else around. So if you’re alone and are really telling the truth, then you’re not a threat.”

“Oh definitely not,” Axel tried cracking a smile to lighten up the mood and maybe get the other boy to lower his weapon. “I honestly just wanted to get some sleep.”

The other person—probably a soldier guessing from his getup—actually gave a small smile of his own and finally took away the blade. “If you really are lost then it’s our job to help a citizen,” he said as he tucked the weapon into its sheath and offered his hand to Axel. “I apologize for the rude meeting, it’s just that we’re on a hunt here ourselves and can’t really trust anyone we come by very easily. My name is Riku, commander of our search group.”

_ Isn’t this guy a bit too young to be the one in charge?  _

Axel himself wasn’t sure if he wanted to trust this person, but given his current situation making less enemies was more than ideal. Maybe these people could actually help him out if he played his cards right. He took Riku’s hand and shook it, trying to avoid squeezing it too much due to his bandaged palms. Riku seemed to notice that and also gave only a light shake.

“Pleased to meetcha,” Axel said. “But how come I was greeted by a commander instead of a scout or something?”

“Others are on the lookout in different directions, I was actually just returning to camp from collecting some wood,” Riku answered as he beckoned Axel to follow him and began walking towards what Axel figured was the aforementioned camp. “We can give you a place to rest if that’s what you seek.”

“Oh that would be wonderful,” Axel put on his most sugary sweet voice. He really needed to show that his threat level was zero, even if that wasn’t entirely true.

“I also couldn’t help but notice that you’re a fire user, right?” Riku turned back to him slightly as he continued to walk. “Did you injure yourself by accident?”

_ How the fuck— _

“Um, yeah. But how did you know my hands caught on fire?” Axel asked cautiously. Was this guy psychic?

Riku in turn gave him an incredulous expression and raised one of his eyebrows. “Did you lose some memories when you hit your head or is it that you’ve never seen your face in a mirror?” He pointed beneath his eyes as he said that, but that didn’t tell Axel anything. He could only go along with this as to not raise more suspicion.

“Yup, you’re right. Some of it seems to be pretty fuzzy.”

“We can try to jog it back then,” the other said as they finally reached the campsite.

There were several tents propped up, a relatively large bonfire being prepared by a few people and to the side Axel could see a handful of dark animals tied to the trees by their reigns. They kinda looked like horses, but more like horses that you would meet in your nightmares. Axel stared for a few seconds into one of its glowing eyes before snapping his attention from them. He really didn’t want to know more about these animals.

As he looked around, Riku introduced him to the other people, saying that he was lost and couldn’t remember some things. He instructed one of them to go get a mirror, put away the wood that he had been carrying, and then sat Axel down on a log by the soon-to-be bonfire. A few of the soldiers continued what they had been doing, but the others were slightly more interested in the newcomer as they crowded around him.

“Here you go,” Riku said as he handed him a small handheld mirror before sitting down next to him on the log. 

Axel took it and raised it to his face to see what the hell the other person had been talking about. At this point he wasn’t even sure if he looked like himself or a completely different person. 

Thankfully, he was met by the face that he had been used to over all the years he had been alive. However, what he hadn’t been used to were two purple marks under his eyes, looking kind of like reverse teardrops. He brought his free hand up and hesitantly touched them. They didn’t feel any different, so he tried rubbing at his skin. Nothing. They didn’t disappear or even smudge. Was it a tattoo?

As he looked at the mirror he also saw what he had already come to expect. His hair was pushed back, something that wasn’t too odd as he liked wearing it like that, but the way it stood looked as if he had used a shit-ton of hair gel. Except he could still remember the softness of it underneath his fingers. The colour also appeared to be more vibrant, though he wasn’t sure if this was only because of the setting sun or his own imagination. 

The marks under his eyes still bothered him. If they were indeed tattoos they didn’t feel like fresh ones—there had been no pain when he had rubbed at them. He then put down the mirror and rolled up the sleeve on his left arm. If he had gained a new tattoo, did that mean the one he had before was gone?

As he had thought, his left arm was completely unmarred. Could he even count himself as surprised anymore?

“So these things,” he pointed underneath his eyes as he turned back to Riku, “they let me use fire?”

“Not exactly. It’s more like they indicate that you have an affinity for fire based magic,” Riku answered as if he was talking about the weather.

Axel had to exert immense self-restraint as he heard him say that. Now this place also had fucking  _ magic?!  _ He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths before opening them back again. He could hear a few of the soldiers snicker at him.

“Well, it’s not very usual to see fire users around these parts, but you say you can’t remember how you got here?” Riku continued the conversation as Axel tried to reevaluate his entire worldview in a couple of seconds.

“Right, I think I hit my head and then got attacked by an animal, so I haven’t been having the best of time.”  _ That was an understatement.  _

“You’re lucky that you didn’t run into a Crossed then,” one of the soldiers piped up. He couldn’t see their face as they stood somewhere behind him, but somehow the voice sounded familiar.

“He’s right.” Riku nodded. “Like I had said, we’re on a search particularly for that reason. We had gotten information and some rumours that one might be living somewhere around these parts, so we’re currently looking for them.”

“And a Crossed is…?” Axel hoped his amnesiac act could carry him at least this far.

“Only the most dangerous thing in this world,” another soldier answered as she sat down on Axel’s other side, making him turn his attention towards the woman. “It’s a cursed existence that frankly should be gotten rid off as soon as possible.” Her voice was filled with clear disdain. 

“Like the fire marks on your face, some people have a cross mark somewhere on their bodies,” Riku explained in a more neutral manner. “If someone has that they’re called a Crossed and that means that they can freely use every single type of magic in this land.”

_ And that’s a bad thing?  _ Axel refrained from making the comment, feeling like he probably shouldn’t show a stance on this particular subject.

“It only brings misfortune,” another one of the soldiers spoke up from the small crowd. “Those things are way too powerful to be a benign existence and all throughout history they have brought nothing but disaster. It’s our job to find those who had avoided detection from when they had just gotten the marks and dispose of them.”

Riku shot a glance towards the person who had spoken, but didn’t say anything. He let out an almost inaudible sigh that Axel barely caught only because he was nearest to him. “We are currently tracking down one of the Crossed that we believe has been hiding out here. Perhaps you’ve seen someone like that?”

Axel only had a split second to decide how he should answer that. The guy who had attacked him flashed before his eyes, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “No, can’t believe I have.”

“I doubt he would be alive if he had,” someone retorted.

“So do you kill children as well?” Axel asked.

“That’s usually the case,” the woman on his left answered before Riku could. “Most of them are found right when they get their marks after all. Those who aren’t… well, then it’s our job to find them.”

The answer made Axel feel slightly sick, but he could see the stance of the people around him and even he wasn’t as stupid as to start something with a group of armed soldiers. He only nodded his head, feeling more tired by the minute.

“Thanks then, I’ll keep that in mind,” he said as he tried to force a smile to his face, though he wasn’t sure if it didn’t just turn out to be a grimace. 

Someone finally started the fire and the heat comfortably washed over him. Axel felt some of his fatigue disappear as he stared at the slowly rising flame. He had thought that he would have been skittish around open fire from his previous incident, but somehow its warmth only seemed inviting as it flickered in the gradually darkening backdrop.

“Are you alright?” he heard Riku’s voice and only then realised that the other had put a hand on his shoulder and was now looking at him.

“Yeah, I think I’m just very tired.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exposition dump? Don’t know her.


	3. Third time’s the charm

As Axel woke up, he was greeted by a room he was slowly getting used to in his new apartment. He checked his phone to see if he had slept through the alarm but saw that it was only a few minutes away.

“God, did I even sleep at all?” He put his face in his hands as he forced himself to sit up in his bed and let out a low groan. 

_ Another one of those weird dreams…  _ At this point he figured that he had somehow unlocked extreme lucid dreaming. Or at least he would have liked to think of it in that way. But didn’t lucid dreaming entail that you were still sleeping? His body didn’t feel rested at all and his head was even heavier than the day before. Honestly, he would have rather just spend the rest of the day sleeping, but this was the first week, he had promised himself he would at least try to attend the lectures during it.

With lethargic movements Axel dragged himself out of his bed and did his whole morning routine in slow motion. He didn’t bother to make himself look too presentable, though as he went into the bathroom and his eyes settled on the mirror, he couldn’t help but put his fingers up to his cheeks, right below the eyes.

Nothing.

His face was clear, although he did have killer eyebags. His skin also looked more sickly, a pale contrast to his hair that was all over the place. But even it didn’t look as vibrant as he was used to. Was it only because it had been so bright in the dream that it now looked more bleak by comparison?

He splashed some cold water in his face to wake himself up and realized that he wet his bandages. Right, he had to take care of that too. One more thing on his list to worry about.

Maybe all of this was just stress getting to him? He hadn’t expected to be anxious about starting university and nothing had really happened yet, but maybe his subconsciousness was freaking out for some reason.

Axel didn’t know.

By sheer force of will he managed to lug to his classes, the first few being from his major, chemistry, while the last was one of the general lectures that everyone had to attend, no matter the major or year they were in. He spaced out again, staring into the distance and thinking how he should probably try to make some friends here or else his next four years might be very boring. Sure, he still had friends from school, but who knew how often they could hang out once everyone started taking their lives more seriously. However, he was just not in the mood to chat someone up right now, he barely even registered who was sitting next to him, let alone felt like trying to find out their names. His mind could hardly form a full sentence in his head as he sat, completely detached from what was going around him.

Had it even been worth it to come here if he was barely listening to what the professors said? Who knows. At least he got some papers handed to him. That was surely a plus, right?

The general lecture was sociology, something Axel took mainly for the credits, but he figured it shouldn’t be too hard if it was only cursory stuff. He picked out another redhead in the room and made a beeline towards her, plopping down in the free seat near her.

“Heya,” he greeted Kairi as she smiled back at him.

“Hey, Axel. Glad to see you’re at least not skipping the first lecture.” His cousin nudged him in the arm, a faint grin forming on her features. 

“Didn’t want to make you feel alone, princess,” he joked back, noting to himself how that had been a very serious possibility in the morning. 

Kairi’s eyes moved a bit down to catch the bandages on his hands and she narrowed them. “What happened there?” She vaguely gestured towards Axel’s hands as he took out a notebook from his bag.

“Hmm?” He tried to act casual, as if he only noticed the dressing himself just now. “Oh, don’t worry. Just a small accident in the kitchen. Still getting used to the new stove.”

She made a weird expression at that, something that wordlessly told Axel that she couldn’t believe how clumsy he was, but let it slide without asking more questions.

Kairi was a year younger than him and in a different major, but she went here straight after school, so the two of them had decided to take the general lectures together for company and moral support. For now Axel hoped that he could copy her notes if there was something important to know, because he was ready to sleep with his eyes open for the upcoming hour.

He did pretty much that, with some interspaced doodling in his notes. At a few points he glanced to Kairi to see if she was writing anything down. He could see in her neat handwriting a couple of sentences, though he couldn’t bring his eyes to focus for long enough to read them, so he only caught a few random words, like ‘salient identity’ and ‘possible selves’.

At one point, nearing the end of the lecture, movement erupted in the room. Axel was about ready to pack his things to leave, thinking that the lecture ended early, but he realized that no one was actually leaving the room. Everyone was forming into small groups. He turned to Kairi only to see that she was already talking to a few of the people who had been sitting near her on the other side.

“Great, then we already have four,” she said to the two boys and Axel had to make a double take as he realized that one of them looked extremely familiar.

The guy on Kairi’s left wasn’t someone Axel had seen before, a pretty normal looking brunette with a bright face. The boy next to him, on the other hand…

He looked almost exactly as Riku, the commander he had met in his dream.

The two boys acknowledged him as he gawked at the silver haired one. Kairi turned back to look at him with a bit of exasperation on her face. “Come on, ask the people next to you. We still need two more for the group project.”

“Project?” he mimicked dumbly.

“Yes, now hurry or else everyone will find some other groups,” she said as she turned around to look at the row behind them and began talking to the people there.

Axel did as he was told and shifted to look at whoever was on his right. He was met with a girl dressed in black, even her hair matching her getup. It looked like she had been about to try getting Axel’s attention herself, her hand slightly raised towards him.

“Yo, want to do this project thingy together?” he asked as he pointed behind him in the direction of Kairi and the other two. “We already have four.”

“Sure,” she nodded with a faint smile and leaned over a bit to wave at the others.

As she did that, Kairi turned back to sit normally in her seat and threw a glance at Axel. He winked as an indication that he did his part, leaning back a bit himself so that his tall stature wouldn’t block the girl on his right from seeing the rest of their group.

“Alright, then there’s six of us,” his cousin clapped her hands as she said that and another face popped up from the row behind theirs.

“Hey,” a guy in a black and white checkered beanie greeted in a bored voice as he rested his arms on Axel’s and Kairi’s backrests. Axel could only see his profile, framed by blond hair sticking out from underneath the hat, but he also looked a bit familiar.

As he stared at him, the boy turned his face towards Axel and the other girl. The moment he did that Axel realized why he looked familiar.

It was the guy who had attacked him in the dream, he was sure of it. He hadn’t seen him very well in the dark, but he remembered the faintly illuminated face looking at him with disgust staining his features. The boy in front of him now looked nonchalant, his attention fixed on the dark haired girl as he nodded to her before turning away to look at the others. As he did that, for a split moment his and Axel’s eyes met, and it looked like he slightly narrowed his in an expression that Axel couldn’t place in a fraction of a second that he saw it. And then all he was met with was the back of the beanie.

“So now that we have everyone we can introduce ourselves and maybe exchange some info so that we could meet up some time to talk about the group work?” Kairi offered, taking the role of the initiator. “There’s not much time left for the lecture, so I don’t think we’ll decide what we want to do right now.”

That sounded great to Axel as he was hard pressed just to concentrate on the fact that he was apparently meeting people he had seen in his dreams.

“My name’s Sora,” the brunette piped up with a grin.

“I’m Xion,” the girl on Axel’s right said in a sweet voice, though he couldn’t see her expression.

“Axel,” he said, catching from the corner of his eye that the blondie’s shoulders stiffened up as he did so.

“Roxas,” the guy said, not looking at Axel nor Xion. The name had a familiar feeling to it in Axel’s mind. Maybe there had been someone named like that in school? Sure didn’t sound typical, but neither did most of his friends’ when he really thought about it. Maybe this town just had a penchant for odd names.

Kairi introduced herself and all that was left was the silver haired boy. Axel waited with baited breath and as he heard “I’m Riku,” he almost let out a crazed laugh.

_ This can’t be real. Am I fucking clairvoyant?! Should I get a crystal ball and some tarot cards while I’m on a roll? _

His fuzzy thoughts began running a stumbling marathon as he barely registered that everyone besides Riku was a first year, while the guy was a second year. The others were talking about something but as much as he tried Axel just couldn’t bring himself to follow along as his eyes darted back and forth from Roxas to Riku.

Had he just seen them in the hallways or on the street and then his brain just put them in his way too realistic, possibly dangerous to his well being, dream? But how would that explain the fact that he already knew Riku’s name? Was it also a complete coincidence that he saw them just yesterday? His head began hurting even more as he racked through these questions.

Eventually, everyone started to pack up their things and Axel could only nod to his newly formed group as Kairi promised to make a group chat for all of them to settle on a meeting. He looked for a moment at Riku, but the other was talking to Sora as they headed out of the room. His eyes then settled on Roxas, who also stared at him for a few moments before slinging his backpack over his shoulder and leaving.

* * *

 

The headache and fatigue that Axel felt got even worse as the day dragged on. He had hoped that his head would have cleared up once he met up with Demyx and the others, but all of his friends’ voices just grated on his nerves more and more, making him irritated and snappy. Even Ienzo’s typically more soothing cadence now sounded like auditory torture. He could see Isa throwing weird glances his way and chose to ignore them completely. He wouldn’t give the other the opportunity to say ‘I told you so’ if he acknowledged the fact that he wasn’t feeling too good in front of him.

Luckily, Larxene and Demyx got into a semi-fight—more like she was just bullying him like usual—that drew everyone’s attention away from Axel’s sour mood. He really didn’t want any of them trying to play therapist. Not like that was a high probability with his group of friends, but you never knew. 

Isa offered to drive him home but Axel declined, just wanting to be alone. He waved his friend off without saying much and left for the bus stop. If anyone would have asked him later what their group had done that day, he honestly wouldn’t have been able to remember. Even as he walked back home after getting off the horrible torment of senses that was public transport, the conversation topics were already floating away from his grasp. 

Back at his apartment he crashed almost as soon as he got through the door. Who cared if he slept in his jeans, at this point his body was practically begging him just to go to sleep. His bed was the most inviting thing he had ever seen, so of course he took up on that offer. Everything else could be tomorrow’s problem. 

He fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, but to his dismay he yet again woke up almost immediately after.

To the sight of an empty camp.

Axel steadied himself up from the place he hazily remembered of being offered to him to sleep the last time he had been here, except then it had been inside of a tent and not in the middle of trampled down grass. The remnants of the bonfire were still visible in the middle of the open space, but almost no other signs of people were left. All of the soldiers were gone, along with their tents and horse-like creatures.

Did he have to get used to always waking up alone?

The boy stood there for a few minutes, somehow hoping that one of the soldiers would appear again and take him along to whatever destination they were heading for. This place wasn’t as bad in the day, but who knew if he wouldn’t just run into those wild animals again. He had gotten seriously lucky the last time, but he couldn’t count on that luck staying with him. 

Eventually he just sighed and let his feet take him wherever they deemed fit. He let his body go on autopilot as he mainly just stared at his shoes, ever so often barely evading running face first into a tree or a bigger bush. This was ridiculous; why was his subconsciousness harassing him like this? Could he even still believe that this was only a very elaborate dream? His brain didn’t have the capacity to answer any of his questions. It hardly had enough juice just to keep him walking.

He couldn’t really tell why he felt the need to do that. He just knew he needed to keep moving and find a safer place. Whatever that entailed. 

Axel felt like he could see things moving just from the corner of his eyes, but every time he tried to catch it he’d only be met with silence. No rustling bushes, not even a falling leaf. The few things he could clearly hear was the blood pumping in his ears and the incessant ringing that had started around the time he had woken up in the campsite. At this point he couldn’t trust his mind not to play tricks on him. He just felt so tired.

After some time had passed—minutes, hours?—Axel stumbled upon a small river. People usually gathered around water, right? So he figured that following it would eventually lead him to a place away from the creatures living in this forest. 

He walked along the gurgling water, occasionally catching himself from swaying and falling into it. His balance was getting worse and worse, but at least his long legs were still working. One good thing he got out of them, he supposed.

The river led him to a larger lake, one that he could barely see the end of in the horizon, but it was still surrounded by trees. No buildings, no small town or any human activity that he could see of. 

Great.

He kept walking—now alongside it—because really, what else could he do? Sit down like a normal person and think about what he was doing? Yeah, right. Like his brain could manage that kind of cognitive function right now. Curl down on the grass and take a nap? For some reason he didn’t feel like that would fix anything. Recently sleep just made him more tired.

So he walked.

And eventually, to Axel’s surprise, he saw a small wooden house a bit further away from the lake, but near it enough not to be completely hidden away by the imposing trees. For a moment he wondered if that was just one more trick his woozy mind was playing on him—there had been a lot more hallucinations, both auditory and visual, he had experienced through the day—but as he got closer the house didn’t disappear. It was relatively small, but it didn’t look abandoned. Its surroundings looked natural, no real garden or anything, yet everything seemed to be well kept, or at least not overgrown.

Axel reached out and knocked on the door but received no answer. He looked around, feeling slightly like a creep as he checked the inside of the building through one of its windows. He couldn’t see much in the already dimming sunlight and the shadows of the trees. There was clearly a bed, big enough for one person, a fireplace and a huge table littered with some kind of plants and books.

No one inside, though.

He sighed and walked back to the door, leaning against it and letting his back slide down until he sat on the ground. He craned his neck to look at the patch of sky that was visible through the foliage, the soft orange of the twilight a soothing sight to his tired eyes. He was almost ready to close them and rest for at least a little while, but a sharp intake of breath caught his dwindling attention.

Axel lazily lowered his head back only to see a now familiar face staring at him from further down the forest path leading to the house. The blondie—wait, were there two of them? Nah, just his eyes going out of focus for a moment—stood still, his whole body visibly tense even from where Axel sat. 

“Hey…” Axel leaned his head to the side in a languid motion, giving the other boy a sleepy smile. He didn’t feel as annoyed as he had been earlier in the day, an exhausted kind of giddiness taking over instead. He had to think of the guy’s name for a few moments with his sluggish mind. Luckily, the other seemed to be rooted in his spot, so he wasn’t going anywhere soon. “...Roxas, right?”

Roxas pressed his lips into a thin line at this. His expression seemed irritated and suspicious, but at least he didn’t appear noticeably aggressive as he had been the last time they had met in this place.

“I told you to stay away,” he finally said, taking a few steps closer.

“Well, I didn’t know this house belonged to you—not really any signs I could see,” Axel joked. A tiny voice at the back of his mind nagged him that this guy was dangerous, that he should get up and run away as fast as he could, but he really didn’t have the energy to do that. Besides, he hadn’t attacked him yet. That was kinda a good sign.

“How did you know my name?” Roxas continued as he took slow steps towards Axel, each one seemingly heavier than the last. “Did you get another mind or dream user to help you out?”

“You told me yourself. Or at least I think you did?” Axel didn’t have the strength to come up with a lie, but he also didn’t feel like explaining himself. Too much work for the current state he was in.

His answer stopped the other in his tracks, about a metre away from the redhead. Axel could see him clutch his gloved fists near the two scabbards by his hips, the sight of them bringing back a dull pain at the back of his head, though that could have been just his general headache. 

“Don’t fuck with me,” the words sounded close to a growl and Axel could actually feel a faint chill emanating from the person looking down at him, a stark contrast from the comfortable warmth of the evening. 

“Don’t really seem to be in a position to do so,” he answered without much thought. Probably not the best idea to egg on an already agitated person, however, critical thought had been escaping him for quite a while now. “I’d stand up to greet you more properly, but I think I might just swoon back into the door,” he snickered to himself.

Roxas didn’t reply, only grit his teeth and sneered at him. He had yet to take out the weapons, so Axel saw that as a sign for him to continue. “I’d love to hang out with you more, but I’m pretty sure I’m a second away from passing out, so if that happens could I at least ask you not to kill me in my sleep?” He gave a droopy grin like he was chatting with a friend and not a hostile stranger. He could barely keep his eyes open at this point, blinking slowly as he watched Roxas’ reaction.

Contrary to what he had thought, his flippant remark didn’t anger the other boy further. Instead, Roxas’ shoulders relaxed as his expression turned into something more melancholy and slightly disbelieving. The warm air returned, making Axel feel even more lethargic. 

“—not him…” Roxas said something under his breath so faintly that Axel only caught the end of it. It sounded more like a sigh than a sentence.

“Start singing in that voice and I’ll be out cold in the blink of an eye,” Axel murmured himself, thinking that a lullaby wouldn’t be so bad right now. He leaned his head back against the door and closed his eyes with a slow exhale. He just needed to rest them for a second.

The world turned dark behind his eyelids. Even the hard wood against his back felt comfortable in his exhaustion. It was still slightly warm from the day’s sunlight falling onto it, and that, coupled with the gentle mild wind of early autumn, was enough to lull him into sleep. A voice not too far away from him said something, but it already sounded like he was sinking underwater, the word(s) muffled and unclear.

_ “Axel?” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: only three chapters in did I realize that this kinda counts as an isekai


	4. Bad ideas

Once Axel woke up back in his bed he spent an inestimable amount of time just staring at the ceiling. His body felt too heavy to move and the pain in his head only drummed on like it was being squeezed from all sides. He imagined that he could still feel the faint warmth from his dream, though whether that was just a residual lingering sensation or not he couldn’t tell.

The silence of the room was shattered by the alarm, which by all means was pretty innocuous, but to Axel it now sounded like chainsaws going off next to his ears. Somehow he managed to force his body to get up, silence the incessant sound, and try to get out of the bed. The last action didn’t work as well as he had intended and he found himself laying face first on the floor, his legs tangled up in the bedsheets. All he could do was let out a low whine, which was muffled by the fact that his mouth was still pressed against the floorboards.

Cohesive thoughts didn’t really even form in Axel’s head, so his body went pretty much on autopilot. The whole morning was going in and out like a choppily edited movie with Axel only catching little tidbits of what he was doing. Some of his clothes may not have been put on completely correctly—he wasn’t sure if his shirt was inside-out or not when he managed to see himself in the mirror. He couldn’t even register the taste of the coffee he was drinking. Did he put sugar in it? He couldn’t remember if he brewed it with water—there was a strange aftertaste to it—though at this point he was certain he could taste the still air inside his apartment. Was that normal?

He couldn’t remember.

With his consciousness flickering Axel managed by some miraculous means to get to his university’s building. He tried to think if there was a reason why he did that, but that question already took out everything he had and left no more cognitive strength to form an answer. His body probably knew. After all, it had gotten him here.

After a few wrong rooms, he eventually found the one where his first lecture was to take place. Ignoring everyone around him, he took a seat, fell into it like his bones had given out, and completely spaced out. At some point the lecture probably began, maybe the professor was saying something important if most of the people in the room were taking notes, but to Axel all of that was just background noise.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed—that in itself had become a more and more of an intangible concept to his fleeting awareness—when the doors to the lecture hall swung open with a lot more force than was necessary. By the time Axel managed to languidly move his body to look at the loud and most likely late newcomer, he was met with the sight of a person who was oddly becoming a constant in his life.

And for some reason this person was making a beeline straight towards him.

Roxas pushed through the other students, some of which grumbled a complain or two as he showed them in his haste. The expression on his face spelled clear impatience. Axel just blinked at him dumbly, not moving from his spot.

“Come on,” Roxas said in a whisper that sounded more like a barely contained hiss once he finally reached the redhead. “We need to leave, _now_.”

Axel took a few moments to register that he was being talked to, then a few more to realize what was being said to him. Roxas’ impatience grew with every second that the other was still sitting in his chair, unmowing. He grabbed Axel by the arm and hoisted him up with a lot more strength than the taller boy would have imagined him having. It probably looked comical to others, seeing as Roxas was almost a head shorter than the other, but Axel couldn’t really bring himself to care at that moment. He let himself be guided out of the room without any protest, the grip on his arm firm but not painful.

Roxas led them through the mostly empty hallways, obviously heading for the entrance of the building. “Where do you live?” His question came as a bit of a surprise and Axel really tried to answer him, yet the exact address was currently escaping him. He fumbled with his phone, opened up the maps app and showed it to Roxas. The other boy took it from him and stared, never slowing down as they exited the building and were now walking towards the nearest bus stop.

“It’s closer than mine, so we’ll have to go there,” he mumbled before turning to look at Axel. “Do you remember how to get there?”

Axel only nodded. He was pretty sure he could still do that. Something at the back of his head was telling him that he was acting colossally stupid, letting a relative stranger pull him around, showing him his address and now accepting to take him there. Not to mention this guy—or at least a version of him—had been pretty hostile towards him the few other times they had previously met. He would have probably registered these thoughts a lot more clearly if only he had been able to actually fully form them and not just vaguely think _Huh, strange. Maybe bad? Oh well._

Maybe it was the fact that Roxas looked genuinely concerned, and that concern was aimed at Axel for some reason. Or maybe it was just evidence that all of his critical thought and self-preservation had gone out of the window way back when Axel had smashed his head against one.

Once they reached the bus stop, Axel pointed to the one that would take him home. Roxas helped him get on it and kept a close watch on both the stops and the other boy who was now fixated on a wristband that he wore. The black and white pattern began blurring into one the more he looked at it, the colours bleeding out from the edges of the boxes that they were contained in and flowing into each other.

Then he blinked.

The hand that the wristband belonged to was moving—a wave to snap him out of his daze. “We’re almost there. Let’s go.” Roxas’ voice was close as he leaned down to help Axel get up from the bus seat.

Axel hadn’t had the best of balance that day, as evident from his endeavour to get out of the bed and the consecutive stumbling around his apartment while crashing into things. He tried his best to keep upright in the still moving vehicle, but it wasn’t the easiest task at the moment. Roxas, seeing this, took the arm by which he had helped the other out, and swung it over his shoulders like one would do for a drunk friend. He held onto it while he put his other hand on Axel’s side, keeping both of them steady.

Axel vaguely navigated them towards his apartment building. Roxas kept grumbling under his nose, some of it loud enough for the other to hear. “Why would you even go to lectures in this state?” Though it was a question, it didn’t seem like he expected an answer, so Axel didn't bother. He wasn't sure of the reason himself.

The two of them somehow got up to the floor on which Axel’s apartment was, most of that due to Roxas pretty much dragging the other’s nearly completely limp body. It was nice to lean on someone, Axel could just let the other person guide them to where they needed to go. He still couldn’t figure out _why_ they needed to go to his place, but that didn’t really matter much to him at that moment anyway.

“Key?” Roxas asked as he took the hand by which he had been holding Axel’s waist and held out his palm. The other blinked a few times and put his own free hand on it, his mouth forming into a lopsided grin as he let out a small laugh. Roxas stared at their hands for a few seconds before turning his head up to look Axel in the face and narrowing his eyes. “We need to get inside. I know it’s hard for you right now but please try to act normal for a few more minutes at least.”

“‘Kay,” Axel managed to slur even that simple word and took out the key after spending some time rummaging through his nearly empty messenger bag. Roxas took it from him and opened the door, carefully navigating both of them through it and into Axel’s apartment.

The shorter boy walked them to the bedroom and carefully let Axel down on the bed in a sitting position. “Under no circumstances do you fall asleep until I tell you, got it?” he asked as he pointed right at the other’s face, making Axel go cross-eyed as he followed the finger. He hummed an answer and saw Roxas sling his backpack off and crouch as he began searching for something inside of it. His eyes felt so heavy and dry as he watched.

Just a slow blink. He only needed to close his eyes for a little bit to rest them.

When he opened them he found himself back in the forest, staring blankly at his dark surroundings and the vague shapes of trees. He was still sitting, though now he wasn’t leaning against the wall that his bed was positioned near but against the door of the house he had previously found. He tried to think how he got here again, not really moving from his spot on the ground.

His hazy thoughts were interrupted as the door that he was leaning on suddenly swung inwards. Losing his balance, Axel dropped back, banging his head against the floorboards of the house. He winced—though his body didn’t really register the pain all that much—and saw Roxas’ face looking at him from above. There was a small scowl there, like one would look at a disobedient child.

“I told you not to go to sleep,” he said as he crouched down, put his hands under Axel’s armpits and hoisted him up. He couldn’t put the other fully on his feet as Axel’s body wasn’t really listening to him anymore, so he just kind of dragged him further inside the house and towards the bed. “Don’t make me take out the swords again to threaten you.”

Axel hummed a vague answer and let Roxas put him on the bed again. He didn’t let himself even blink now, fearing that he might just involuntarily conk out again. The blond boy grabbed something from the clustered table and turned back to him, his face relaxing slightly as he saw that Axel was still awake.

“Here,” he gave him a small pill and a cup of water. Axel stared at it as it sat on his bandaged palm. Even if he was barely able to form a thought, he could still understand that taking some sort of drug from a stranger was definitely a bad thing. Roxas saw his obvious hesitation and sighed. “I know how this looks, but trust me—if you want to get better and actually get some rest then you need to drink this.”

This was a bad idea, but he was so tired. If Roxas was actually telling the truth then he could finally get some sleep. Could this pill be anything worse than what he was already feeling?

With that last thought in mind Axel put his hand against his mouth, took a gulp from the cup, and swallowed. His body didn’t feel any different, though whatever this was probably wouldn’t work instantaneously. He looked back at Roxas, waiting for some kind of sign from him. The other boy seemed relieved as he took the cup from him.

“Alright, now you can go to sleep,” Roxas said and Axel blinked a few times while still staring at him before slowly nodding his heavy head. He kicked off his weird shoes—that he had no memory of ever buying or putting on—and slumped on the bed, not bothering with any of his other clothes.

The moment his head hit the pillow he could feel the last of his strength leaving him and so he finally closed his eyes, letting the long awaited sleep to wash over him.

* * *

 

Roxas looked at the sleeping body sprawled awkwardly on his bed.

He had taken a few minutes just to watch the other, checking to see if he wouldn’t disappear once his eyes had closed. Once Axel’s breathing settled into a slow rhythm, he let himself relax, his tense shoulders slumping and a laboured exhale escaping his lips.

“That’s that then,” he said to the mostly silent house. He had never expected it to have more than one person in it, so now he wasn’t exactly sure what to do.

Watch over him. See that nothing bad happens.

Roxas finally put down the cup he had been holding and turned back to look at Axel. He shook his head, seeing the awkward angle that the other was asleep in, and took a few moments to readjust him and pull the blanket from under the redhead so that he could cover him with it.

The blond boy moved one of the chairs he had and set it next to the bed before sitting on it. He took Axel’s hands from underneath the blanket, carefully unwrapping the bandages around them. The skin was damaged and blistered, so he put his own hands on them. A faint glow emitted from underneath his palms, though it was barely visible even in the relatively dark room. As the minutes ticked by, the redness eventually receded, followed by the disappearing blisters. During that time Roxas chanced a look at the other’s sleeping face.

Axel didn’t look good. His complexion was pale, almost grey in the flickering candlelight that Roxas had managed to quickly put on once he had gotten back to his house. He placed one of his hands on the other’s forehead and concentrated for a bit. He held it there for some time, watching as colour gradually returned to Axel’s skin. Once he was content with what he had done, he gently raised his hand, even though he knew that the movement wouldn’t actually disturb mister sleeping beauty as he hadn’t even stirred when Roxas had yanked the blanket from under him.

Roxas had seen Axel before, but it had only been fleeting glances and moments where he hadn’t really bothered to take in the face that was now before him. It looked pretty much how he had imagined. Sure, things had changed, but not enough so that he wouldn’t recognize him. He let his lingering fingers brush against one of the marks beneath the other’s eyes for only a short moment before squeezing his hand, his nails digging into his skin.

He pressed his lips into a thin line as the shadows from the candles danced on Axel’s face, and stood up to go set up the fireplace.

“You’re not really him, though…”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wouldn’t normal people start having micro-sleeps when they’re severely tired? Yes.  
> Is Axel a normal person? No.  
> Thank you for coming to my TED talk


	5. Shed some light

It felt comfortable. Maybe not the height of luxury and coziness, but it was comfortable.

Axel readjusted himself on whatever he was laying and pressed his face further into the pillow. The smell was slightly musty, like it hadn’t been used in a while. He could hear a lulling crackling sound, one that unmistakably came from burning fire. Interested in where it came from, he eventually opened his eyes and slowly raised himself into a sitting position on the bed that he had been sleeping in.

The room he was in looked slightly familiar, though it wasn’t illuminated very well. The only light sources were a fireplace at the other end of the room and a small floating ball of light next to an armchair.

Yeah, he was still dreaming.

Axel let out a yawn wide enough to make his eyes tear up and began wiping at one of them with the heel of his palm. This seemed to alert the other person in the room, whom the redhead hadn’t noticed until he closed the book that he had been reading and turned in the armchair to look at Axel.

“Roxas?” he asked, his voice hoarse and still sleep-ridden. He looked like his course mate—or at least the spiky haired version of him.

“Hey,” the other answered, not really moving from his seat, just looking at Axel. “Took you long enough to wake up.”

Axel blinked, still not entirely sure if he was still asleep or not. He felt awake but who knew if he could trust his senses anymore. He figured he’d just play along. “How long was I asleep then?”

Roxas raised his left hand and looked at the wristband on it as if it was a watch. “Hmm, probably about thirty hours.”

“ _ Thirty hours?! _ ” Axel immediately jumped up from the bed and had to steady himself from the quick motion. Roxas didn’t even flinch from his sudden outburst, following the other with bored eyes. “But wait, how do I know that I’m still not dreaming?” Axel pointed at the ball of light next to Roxas’ face. “That’s not something you see in normal life.”

“Yeah, it is.”

Axel didn’t know how to respond to that blunt answer. Roxas didn’t look like he was joking, but he didn’t know the guy well enough to say that for sure. “Well, it sure as hell isn’t something I’ve seen in my life before. It’s that dream place with magic, right? That really elaborate dream I’ve been having?” If that was the case then why was he arguing with something conjured up by his subconscious mind? He should just hurry up and wake up.

“Nah, it’s pretty real.” A corner of Roxas’ lips turned just a tiny bit into a mocking smile. “I can assure you, you’re definitely not dreaming. Though if it were me, I’d also wish that this place was just a bad dream.”

“You’ve lost me, buddy,” Axel tried to laugh it off with a light tone. At least it felt nice to actually manage his thoughts now. His head wasn’t hurting anymore and he felt pretty okay, but what Roxas was saying still sounded ridiculous. Sure, he had had his doubts about the realness of this place when he had gotten his hands burnt and when he felt the sharpness of Riku’s blade at his throat, but it was all just lucid sleep, right? He should have really looked up how that stuff worked.

“Look,” Roxas said as he shifted the chair with a grating sound to face in Axel’s direction and leaned into it, “you can believe me or not, but you just spent over a day crashed at my place because your body couldn’t take it anymore, jumping from one world to another. Honestly, you’re pretty lucky I found you, ‘cause the alternative for you would have been death from exhaustion.”

Axel only narrowed his eyes as he looked at Roxas. “Sure…”

“I’d imagine it wasn’t really fun, right?” Roxas propped one of his hands on the armrest and leaned his face on it. “Waking up in a completely different place, feeling disoriented and lost? And then whenever you tried to go to sleep you just kept switching between what’s normal to you to this odd version where things seemed somewhat familiar but also nothing like you were used to? Oh, and also the more time passed the more tired you felt, but you just couldn’t get any rest no matter what you did?” The smile slightly grew on his face as he stared directly into Axel’s eyes. “Tell me how much of that I got right.”

Well, that sounded pretty much like what he had been going through, Axel couldn’t argue with that. “But it’s normal to think that it’s just a dream,” he still held his ground. If what Roxas was saying was true then he needed more proof to believe it. “There’s no magic or weird black creatures in the real world.”

“Not in yours,” Roxas shrugged. “But here it’s a pretty normal occurrence,” he waved his free hand as he said that and the small ball of light began following his movements, going back and forth before floating over to where Axel was standing and making a few rounds around his head. He couldn’t tell what it was exactly even as it whizzed past his eyes. It just looked like an untethered light bulb.

Once the ball of light went back to hower near Roxas, casting his face in an odd shadow, Axel finally sat back down on the bed and tried to gather his thoughts. “Then how did I get here?” He figured he could try taking this seriously and see what he could get out of the other boy.

“I’m no expert on this, but I have my guesses,” Roxas yawned, not even trying to cover it with his free hand, before continuing. “You probably got into some sort of accident, lost consciousness and then woke up here, right?” Axel only nodded, trying to follow what the other was going to tell him. “Figured. Something like that happened to me a few years ago, though I didn’t have the luxury of anyone helping me out. I had to figure out a quick way to actually get some sleep without just turning up in your world. Not a really fun experience while you’re bleeding out, I’ll tell you that.” A small laugh escaped him, though it sounded hollow.

“But you managed to do it.”

“Wouldn’t be sitting before you if I didn’t. And neither would you, for that point.”

“Says the guy who attacked me the first time we met.” Axel turned up a corner of his mouth at that as well.

This seemed to silence Roxas for a moment. He sighed and shook his head. “Thought you were someone else who came to mess with me. Sorry about that.”

“Eh, you tried to kill me, you saved my life. I’ll call that even,” Axel grinned, though Roxas didn’t look like he enjoyed the offhand joke. He was sitting too far away for Axel to properly tell his expression—the shadows from the flickering fireplace and the ball of light didn’t help as well—but something definitely passed through his eyes as Axel said the word ‘kill’.

“Anyway,” his eyes weren’t trained on Axel anymore, looking somewhere distant, “I figured this meant that there were possibly two worlds with their own similarities and differences. From what I’ve seen in the past few years I think that the people who live in one of them have an alternate version of themselves in the other.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Axel waved his hands in front of him at this information. “So you’re telling me there’s another me prancing around somewhere here?” That sounded kinda cool. Would it be like having a twin?

“No.” Roxas’ answer was curt and cold. He glanced back at Axel, his blue eyes narrowed and burrowing deep into him. “One of the conditions of you being able to travel between these worlds is having your other counterpart dead.”

Axel’s breath hitched at that, and also because of how icy Roxas’ tone was. “Do you know that for sure? You said that you haven’t figured everything out yourself yet.”

“Seeing you here I’m pretty sure. It fits for both of us.” It seemed like Roxas caught the other’s incredulous look, so he continued to explain. “After some time I managed to find out about my own counterpart in your world. He had been dead for a while, so even if anyone who had known him had seen me, they most likely wouldn’t had paid much attention.”

Axel felt a small pang of curiosity at what had happened to his own counterpart, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to drill Roxas further on that. All he could do was drop the subject and move on. “So we both woke up in the other’s world because we got into some sort of accident?”

“At least that’s what happened to me. I think it was triggered by what your body considered to be a near death experience.”

“But I only hit my head.” Axel grimaced at the memory. “I didn’t even need to go to a hospital.” Or at least he survived without doing so.

“Lucky you, then. Maybe it doesn’t have to be too severe. I only based my guess on my own experience.” Roxas yawned again. “I didn’t even know there could be more people to whom this happened. Not really the social type to check that out.”

“Then how did you figure out I was like you?” Axel leaned further towards Roxas, the bed creaking under his movement.

Roxas held his gaze for a few seconds before answering. “The second time we met here—I saw you close your eyes and disappear. I could have written it off as you using teleportation, but at that point I had thought that you were a mind user. You couldn’t have had two types of magic unless you were a Crossed, and that’s pretty fucking rare,” his expression turned into a sneer as he said that.  _ Another touchy subject _ , Axel mentally noted.  _ Probably best to avoid in the future _ . “The comment you had made about being tired also didn’t sit well with me, so I decided to throw my bets in with you going through the same thing I had before.”

Axel stayed silent for a few moments after hearing that. He had lowered his head and was now looking at his hands propped on his knees. There were no bandages on them anymore. “...Thanks for that.” He smiled to himself. An expression more genuine than what he had wanted for Roxas to see. Maybe he hadn’t. It was dark here anyway.

Roxas didn’t say anything to that and Axel still had his head lowered, so he couldn’t tell if the other had any reaction besides the tired boredom he seemed to mostly exude. They stayed in relative silence, excluding the crackling of the fireplace, until something clicked in Axel’s head.

“Wait, you said I disappeared?” He slowly looked back at Roxas.

“Yeah, you can’t really stay in both places at once. That would be ridiculous.”

Axel couldn’t help himself this time and gave the other an incredulous look.  _ That’s where you draw the line?  _ He rolled his eyes and continued, “Then how come Isa didn’t say anything to me when I conked out in the car? He was there the whole time, kinda hard to miss a person disappearing right next to you for a few minutes.”

Roxas shrugged. “I dunno.”

“You don’t...know?”

“I told you, man, I don’t know everything about this and you’re the first person I’ve met to whom this has also happened. For all I know there could be tons of others who are just better at hiding this. Hell, maybe every single time you go to another world you’re actually creating a different timeline and things are just sliiightly different from the last time you were there but you’re just not that used to that world to notice.”

“Yeah, let’s not go there.” Axel put up a hand to stop Roxas, who seemed like he could keep going with his semi-sarcastic theories. He actually sounded genuine, but that was a whole can of worms that Axel didn’t want to open right now, so he opted for the possibility that the boy was just messing with him. “Maybe the first time is somehow different then?” He tried to go back to the previous topic.

“Could be.” Roxas got a thoughtful look on his face. “Your body could have been adjusting to the sudden shift, so maybe you didn’t fully disappear back then.”

“Hadn’t you noticed anything the first time it happened to you?”

Roxas looked back at Axel with slightly raised eyebrows and his lips turned down. “Was a bit busy bleeding out on the sidewalk, sorry. Though actually,” he straightened up in his seat as something seemed to come back to him, “I think I remember thinking that there was a lot less blood than there was supposed to be and considering the state I was in I shouldn’t have been able to move, let alone find my way into a secluded alley.”

“I also caught my hands on fire but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as I would have imagined,” Axel added. “Then I guess you could consider the first jump a free trial. Too bad you don’t get a choice if you actually want to continue using the product.”

“Either way, I would recommend not falling asleep with someone else near you unless you want them to royally freak out.”

“There go my sleepover plans,” Axel pretended to be devastated as he playfully groaned. “Dem is gonna be so disappointed when he hears that I have to cancel our weekly pillow-fort building extravaganzas.”

“I don’t think I want to know what you’re talking about.” Roxas’ expression clearly told that he thought that Axel was actually being serious so the redhead couldn’t just not take this chance to finally mess with the other a bit as well.

Axel jumped up from the bed and in a few short strides was standing in front of Roxas, who was still sitting in his chair, now looking at him with suspicion. “Maybe you can take his place then,” Axel said as he leaned down and took the other boy’s free hand to hold in his in a pleading manner. “You didn’t seem to mind that I poofed out of existence right before your eyes, so I’d say you’re perfect for the job.”

Roxas stared at his left hand, now cupped between Axel’s. It seemed to take him a few moments but it finally clicked for him that this was just a joke. “Okay,” he said as he yanked his hand back from Axel’s grip and stood up from his seat, making the other backtrack a few steps so that they wouldn’t be standing chest to chest. Well, more like chest to face. The dude seriously looked tiny when compared to Axel’s tall frame and yet he still somehow managed to be the most intimidating presence in the room. Not that Axel had anyone to compare to him right now, but he figured that that would have been true no matter what other people had also been there.

“Actually, let’s have a sleepover right now,” Roxas said as he made his way to the bed where Axel had just been sleeping. He plopped down on it and closed his eyes, looking like he was about to take a nap.

“What about me?” Axel stood dumbly in his spot. He hadn’t expected the other to just go to sleep like that. “I just woke up after apparently thirty hours of sleep.”

Roxas reluctantly opened his eyes and sat up on the bed, staring at Axel with mild annoyance. “Fine, come here.” He lazily beckoned the other with his hand. “You don’t have much time left here either way.”

“Was that a threat?” Axel asked, though he still walked over to stand next to the bed. 

“Just a fact,” Roxas yawned for the umpteenth time. “It’s usually about forty hours before you forcefully get yanked back to your own world. Definitely do not recommend that. Sleep is a way better mediator for the shift.”

“I mean I could probably fall asleep pretty easily no matter what the circumstances. I’ve been told that I’m quite talented at that,” Axel bragged as he crouched down to be at eye-level with the blond boy. “But even I’m not sure if I could do that immediately after thirty whole hours. Besides, the bed is way too small for two people.” He vaguely motioned at where Roxas was sitting.

“Oh don’t worry,” Roxas gave a sweet smile that threw the other off for a moment, “the bed’s not for you.” 

As he said that he raised his right hand and placed his fingertips against Axel’s forehead. The other boy tried to follow his movements but went cross-eyed as he did so. He looked back at Roxas and in doing so realised that his vision was becoming more blurry as the other’s features began to mix with the dark background. He could barely see that Roxas turned his head towards the fireplace, still illuminating the room.

“Time to put out the fire,” he said, the words soft in the slowly disappearing room. Axel could feel his strength leaving him as he collapsed on the wooden floor. 

He immediately opened his eyes to find himself back in his room, awkwardly leaning against a wall and sitting on his bed. He blinked a few times, trying to figure out what had just happened before he saw Roxas’ sleeping body appearing out of thin air on the opposite side of the room.

“Holy fuck…” Axel breathed out, definitely startled by this but not as much as he would have imagined given any other circumstances.

Was he already getting used to this stuff?

Roxas slowly opened his eyes, rolled his shoulders a few times, and stood up as though he hadn’t just broken at least several laws of physics. He glanced at Axel, who was still sitting on his bed and gaping at him. “I’m heading back to my place. Contrary to you, I didn’t get any sleep while I was on babysitter duties, so I want to get some shut-eye.” He looked around the bedroom, mostly still scarce as Axel hadn’t had the time to decorate yet. “Good thing you don’t have any roommates, wouldn’t want to crash your possible sleepovers.” He smirked and headed for the door.

“Hey, wait up!” Axel managed to scramble up and accompany Roxas trough his small apartment. This was definitely not how he had imagined his first visit from a course mate to go, but who was he to complain. “Will you come to the lectures tomorrow or did you just randomly find me the day before?” he asked as Roxas opened the door and was about to step out.

The other boy looked back at him over his shoulder and shrugged. “I’ll probably come. We  _ are _ taking the same subject, you were just too out of it to notice me.” He then turned and left without saying anything else.

Axel leaned on the doorframe as he watched him descend the stairs. “Bye to you too,” he said without really trying to catch Roxas’ attention. It would probably take some time to get the guy to warm up.

Axel looked at his unbandaged hand, stretching his fingers a couple of times as he closed and opened it. 

_ And I was told I’m good with fire. _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An entire chapter of exposition?   
> In my kh fanfic?  
> It's more likely than you think.


	6. Compromise and allies

That night Axel skipped out on sleeping; thirty or so hours can do that to a person, he figured. Instead, he spent his time trying to come to terms with what he had gone through and deciding if he was fully ready to believe that any of that had actually happened. He had heard that some people can have difficulties adjusting to a new period of their life, living on their own and going to university, but this was ridiculous. 

He paced around his apartment, put on some coffee, then decided against it once he took a sip and an odd memory panged at him from his previous fugue state. The dark liquid stained his sink as he poured it down the drain, and watching it swirl made Axel slightly sick again. He knew that he hadn’t eaten for all those hours he had been passed out, but even before that he could barely recall if he had eaten anything more substantial than a candy bar. The past few days felt like a blur and just thinking about them gave him a headache. 

That or he still had a head wound that he hadn’t really checked out.

Thinking along those lines he went back to his bathroom to check himself in the mirror again. His friends would tell him sometimes that he was vain, but this time he actually had a reason other than the appreciation of his self-care routine. His reflection looked back at him, giving him no clear answers on his current dilemma whether he was losing touch with reality. The one thing Axel did notice, though, was the fact that he didn’t really look that sick anymore. His eye bags were gone, and as he gently put up his fingers to check if his eyes were red, he noticed that his bandages were nowhere to be seen as well, along with the fire induced injuries.

He stared at his hands for a few more moments, clenching and relaxing them several times before sighing and letting them drop to his sides. At least now he could take a shower without worrying about wetting the bandages.

The hot water loosened up his tense muscles and Axel took some time to just enjoy the feeling. He didn’t rush through his typical hair product procedures, wanting to get as much grime out as possible. His body felt as though he had both been sleeping for forever, and had just woken up from a too short nap that only made you feel disoriented and uncomfortable.

After drying off he began absentmindedly playing with his hair, combing it and letting the strands fall through his fingers as he braided and re-braided it. This gave him time to think and something to do with his hands as he stared off into the mirror in his bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the floor hunched over himself.

Eventually he settled on just going with the flow. If Roxas—his apparent new guide in life and beyond—was telling the truth, then he had no real choice in the matter. What was going to happen might as well happen and he was there to enjoy the ride. He could follow the dude around and try to get as much as he could out of him, though this sounded like a slightly troublesome ordeal, seeing as Roxas wasn’t giving off the most social and friendly vibes.

_But he helped you._

Axel let the final version of the braid he had made fall down his shoulders and touched the side of his head where he had hit the car window. Nothing there to indicate that he had had a wound. The check at the back of his head yielded no pain or even a bump as well. 

He was completely fine and some voice at the back of his mind nagged at him that he knew exactly who was responsible for that.

“Not as unfriendly as you would like others to think, huh…” he said silently to the empty room.

* * *

Axel was the first person in class the following morning, both because he had plenty of time to get there seeing as he hadn’t slept the night away, and because he was anxious to see if Roxas would show up, though he wouldn’t admit that out loud if anyone had asked. People trickled in as time passed and he even chatted up a few, trying to fix his less than stellar first impressions. One guy, whose name was already escaping him, joked about him getting dragged out of a lecture by a pissed off looking checkerboard and then disappearing for a day.

“Dude, we thought that you might have gotten murdered or something,” he grinned, and Axel couldn’t help but be distracted by something stuck to his teeth, so he just hummed noncommittally. “Did you like steal his girlfriend or was he the one that you cheated on?”

“Nope,” Axel popped the sound as he let his arm drape off the back of his seat in a show of nonchalance. He didn’t need any rumours spreading around so early in the year, so he would just play everything off. “Just a friend who found out that I had accidentally broken his borrowed console. He just gave me a stern lecture, that’s all.”

“And the Houdini act yesterday?”

“Didn’t feel like it. Not like it’s mandatory, right?” Axel gave a smile of his own, though he felt that it probably looked like a smirk given his features. He let his eyes roam around the room like he had been doing every few minutes and felt his expression shift into something more genuine as he saw exactly what he was looking for. 

“Speak of the devil,” he said as he got up from his seat and took his bag. “Gotta go apologize some more. See you around.”

“Good luck.” The guy gave him a sympathetic look and Axel made a mental note to try and catch him some other time. Couldn’t just have one weird acquaintance slash friend in his whole course. The jury was still out on whether Roxas returned the sentiment, but he might as well try his luck.

Axel plopped down in an empty seat next to him and tried his best to give off an air of casualness, even if he was still not completely over silently freaking out on the inside concerning just about _everything_. “Hey.”

Roxas turned to him, still sporting his black and white beanie and a slightly annoyed look on his face. All par for the course so far. 

“Get any sleep?” Axel continued, deciding to take the fact that the other boy hadn’t stood up and left as a good sign.

“Not as much as I would have preferred, but enough.”

“Cool, cool, so I was thinking that you could explain some more things to me? And maybe help out with the whole ‘actually getting some rest’ business, like how you had done before? ‘cause I figure that normal sleep is completely off the table now, right?”

Roxas gave him a once over, most likely deciding whether his chipperness was an act or not, and turned his attention back to the front of the class where the professor was setting up for the lecture. “Sure.”

“Really, that easy?”

“Keep talking and it soon won’t be.” Roxas’ gaze flicked back to him for a split second and Axel could feel the icyness of it just from that. “Figured it would do me no good if you just blindly stumbled around again and got in my way, so I might as well watch over you until you can take care of yourself.”

_This probably counts as a win._

“Great, thanks. So your place or mine?” Axel whispered, seeing as the lecture was beginning and everyone was quieting down.

“Yours.”

“It’s a date then,” he said as he finally turned his attention to the professor, though not before catching a glimpse of Roxas’ jaw clenching as his mouth formed into a thin line. He had to admit, it was fun seeing magic boy display any kind of emotion that wasn’t just distant boredom, though so far annoyance was mainly what he was capable of getting out of him. Maybe with time Axel would be able to see something more. He could only hope.

* * *

The lectures went by slowly, but Axel did try to actually pay attention to them now. Roxas remained quiet as both of them changed rooms for the few that they shared, and even let Axel tag along to get some lunch during one of the windows. He wasn’t being hostile, reacting with appropriate hums and hahs at the other’s blabbering, which Axel did mainly just to fill up the silence, but he didn’t talk much himself. Axel figured that he really might just be tired, or he had a lot on his mind that he wouldn’t share. Either way, it wasn’t stopping him on his current mission that he had just decided on—make friends with the guy and get him on his good side in case he ever needs some saving from the upside-down world.

Never hurt to have some friends.

Once they were free and Axel had somehow convinced Roxas to share his schedule with him, insisting that they needed to stick close to each other at least for the time being while everything got sorted out, they headed back again to Axel’s apartment. 

“Make yourself at home,” he said as he went to put his bag in his bedroom. He heard Roxas throw his somewhere that made a soft thud as it collided, most likely the small sofa in the living-room/kitchen combo. Somehow having another person here and being completely lucid made Axel feel slightly self conscious about the scarceness of the place. He had barely brought anything to decorate or make the place feel lived in aside from the bare necessities and his clothes.

“So how do we do this?” he asked, watching Roxas enter the room with something clutched in his hand.

“Can you fall asleep fast?”

“Usually yeah, but I’m not sure if it will work this time. I might be a bit too giddy for that,” Axel admitted with a laugh.

“I could choke you then—”

“Kinky.”

“ _or_ you can breathe this in for about five minutes,” Roxas finished as he gave the other boy a wet rag.

“Chloroform?” Axel asked as he carefully sniffed at it.

“Don’t really like doing it like this since there can be complications, so I usually prefer just normal sleep, but that’s not on the table now, is it?” Roxas gave him a dubious look. “Choking would take only about fifteen seconds.”

“Yeah, no. I’ll take my chances with the rag.”

“Be my guest.” Roxas shrugged. “Do I need to hold you down until you pass out or can I do my own thing?”

“You must be fun in a relationship,” Axel commented, receiving yet another glare, though he could tell they were growing less annoyed and more just on the slightly exasperated side. He waved the other off, taking a seat on his bed. “I’ll be fine on my own. You can take the sofa and I guess I’ll see you on the other side?”

Roxas apparently didn’t feel the need to answer that as he took Axel’s cue to leave the room without making a sound. The redhead followed him with his eyes through the open door, watching him sit down with his back turned to Axel, and took a few deep breaths with the cloth pressed to his face. It would take a bit, but not wanting to risk it Axel layed down on his bed and stared at his ceiling as he kept breathing in and out.

Sometime after he had closed his eyes and felt the lightheadedness wash over him, he opened them up again only to be met with a completely dark room. He carefully got up from the hardwood floor, letting his memories fall back into place concerning where he currently was. Just as his eyes were getting used to the darkness he heard the bed next to him creak with the added weight of a person.

In the amount of time that it took for Axel to blink the room was lit up in the faint light of a fireplace. Roxas got up from the bed, silently heading for the clustered table in the middle of the room, and the other boy couldn’t help but notice the slight change in appearance he now had. His clothes, previously close to grunge, were now something that Axel wouldn’t have been surprised to see at a renaissance fair. The former plaid button up had changed into a dark vest, along with the baggy shirt now looking like an even baggier linen version of it. The only difference that caught the eye was the fact that the shirt now had a high collar that was done up in what didn’t look like a very comfortable fashion. Loose-fitting pants topped of the ensemble, coupled with a pair of high boots. Somehow the swords were at his hips once again, though Axel couldn’t recall anything that would have resembled them in the kid’s previous getup.

Roxas’ blond hair was no longer partially hidden by the beanie, in its place a headband or a bandana with a similar pattern, though even in the dim light Axel could tell that the colours were more subdued than the clashing stark white and black had been. The hair itself, as he had noted before, was sticking out all over the place, though even the chaos seemed to be at least slightly deliberate, like the other had spent several hours crafting it with glue. A fleeting thought went over of touching it to check if it was actually soft just as Axel’s own had been, but that was quickly kicked to the side. No need to anger someone who had just recently been perfectly fine with pointing swords at him.

Axel distractedly brushed his hand through his own hair, apparently settling on a compromise he hadn’t fully known he was making. The feeling of his fingers being met with the braid he had made the night before was enough to bring a small smile to his face. So it was possible to tame his mane even in this place.

Meanwhile Roxas fiddled with something on the table and Axel’s eyes opened wider as several transparent balls rose up from it, filled with a blueish-green light that was being emitted from the flowers inside them. One by one they floated around the room before seemingly settling in different corners, lighting up as much space as they could. 

“Makes me use less energy this way,” Roxas said, sensing the question at the tip of the other’s tongue. “I only need to wake them up.”

“Uhuh,” Axel agreed as though that made perfect sense. “Sure, wake up the flowers, I got you.”

“Humans aren’t the only thing alive, you know.” Roxas turned to him, his voice sounding as though he was talking to a toddler who was being purposefully thickheaded. “And anything that is alive can have magic in it.”

“Awesome, can we talk more about it then? Seeing as I have no clue how any of this works and would love a crash course.” 

“We’ll see about that,” the other said as he gripped the table and pushed on his hands so that he was now sitting on it, feet dangling.

“Come on, man. I’m begging here,” Axel pleaded in a joking manner. “The sooner you teach me how everything ticks the sooner I’ll be out of your spiky hair. What’s the deal with that anyway?”

“Magic.”

“Is that going to be your answer to everything?”

Roxas only grinned. Not completely friendly, but a start nonetheless. 

“Look, if you don’t want to share your secret dark knowledge, I fully get you,” Axel tried a different approach. “But don’t blame me if I accidentally burn down the whole place, since apparently I’m good with fire going out of control.”

“That’s because you didn’t use a conduit. People tend to choose all sorts of stuff for that—weapons, books, accessories. I have these bad boys.” Roxas patted one of the scabbards. “Gloves are useful too if they’re well made.”

“So it isn’t just fire that’s volatile?”

“Fire’s one of the more dangerous to use, but you can fuck up anything if you really try.”

“How encouraging.”

Axel chanced a glance at his hands, the memory of the fire engulfing them still clear in his head. Did it work like sweat? The thought that this version of his body could perhaps have a gland somewhere that produced that stuff made him feel an uncomfortable sense of unease, like he could accidentally catch fire on the inside and no one would be able to help him. Not the most pleasant way to go out.

“It’s not just the hands, you know,” Roxas interjected his self-reflection, obviously noticing where Axel’s attention had gone to. “People just usually focus on them since that’s what they’re used to. Any part of your body is capable of it. Hell, I’m pretty sure you could breathe fire if you didn’t mind the very highly likely possibility of scorching your throat.”

Axel blanched at that. Even this body was trying to hurt him in this place. Though realistically, could he even call this _his_ body? He could control it, feel physical stimulus through it, but he found it hard to accept that this was actually him. He felt like a visitor, only temporarily taking something that wasn’t his.

_Taking over someone’s life who was already gone from it._

He wondered if Roxas felt the same way in the other world. He had told him that their counterparts had to be dead in order for any of this switching to work, so that must have meant that he had looked into it. Had he somehow found records by looking up his own name? Axel had to admit, it wasn’t a very usual one, but there could have been a possibility that they didn’t even share the same name.

“How did you know?” he suddenly asked in a more somber manner. 

“How to use it?” Roxas raised an eyebrow. “Practise.”

“No.” Axel shook his head and took a moment to sit down on the bed behind him. He didn’t really feel like looking the other boy in the eye as he asked his next question, so he focused on his legs instead. “How did you know that you were… dead? And me for that matter.”

The legs stopped swinging and Axel could see the tension in Roxas’ hands increase as they tightly gripped the edge of the table. This probably wasn’t something he should have dug into.

To his surprise, Roxas spoke up. “I saw a couple of people in your world that I recognized from mine. After a while I took the chance to see if I could find myself. And I did—in an obituary.”

“But you didn’t really take his place, did you?”

“Yeah, just walk up to a couple of grieving parents like ‘hey, I’m your long dead son. Wanna catch up on what’s been going on while I was gone?’ I don’t think that’s the best idea.” The other’s tone was sarcastic, but not particularly angry. A slight swing came back to his legs. “It’s best to just keep out of everything. Worked so far in my life.”

“But now I’m here.” Axel finally raised his eyes to meet Roxas’ distant ones. They looked far too tired for someone so young.

“But now you’re here.”

“Have you been alone here for a while?” Might as well try to get as much as he could if the other boy was offering.

“I’ve been on my own all over the place since I was about six.” One of his hands idly rose to brush over his sternum. “People don’t really like what I am, so it’s best to avoid them.”

“You keep saying ‘people’ like you’re not one of them.”

“By their standards I’m not.” A hollow laugh escaped him, making the room feel colder along with it. “But I can play the role of the monster if they want me to. Now if only they actually left me alone instead of hunting me down like some animal.”

“Because of these?” Axel pointed underneath his own eyes, vaguely remembering what the  soldiers had told him. They had said that they had been looking for someone called a ‘Crossed’.

“Yours are just to indicate that you’re good with fire. That’s pretty normal, even if having two may not be. It just means you have more potential with practise.”

“Then there are different ones.” This was a pretty easy guess, seeing how everyone seemed to know all about him from just looking.

“Plenty.” Roxas took his other hand to help count down with his fingers. “You have your elementals, light, dark, mind, dream and heart. But if I start getting into all of that with you we will just stay up all night and you’ll forget most of what I had said by the next day.”

“That’s not all, though,” Axel couldn’t help but add. He could at least try to get Roxas to tell him this much. “You have something different, right?”

Even if the other boy was being skittish about the subject, Axel felt the need to know more about him. There he was, in a world that apparently was full of magic, with someone who allegedly had all of it at his disposal, and he was willing to offer some insight on it, however minimal, to him. The only problem was accidentally taking his questioning too far. He felt like he had already wandered into that territory some time ago, but he had never been really good at assessing risks. 

Roxas held him down with a stare, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly as he seemed to search for something in Axel’s face. Whatever it was, it didn’t look like he had found it as the shorter boy eventually let his gaze cast to the side where the fireplace crackled, a lone flower languidly floating not too far from it, encased in a glass bubble.  

“Some people have an X mark on their bodies.” His voice was as far away as the look in his eyes. “They’re seen as a pest that needs to be gotten rid off. Too dangerous to let someone live who has so much potential.”

“It doesn’t have to be bad, though. To me you just look like a kid who wants to live in peace, not a power hungry maniac bent on killing everyone who opposes them.” Axel felt the need to say something nice. The atmosphere in the room had been gradually getting more bleak.

“Tell that to the authorities and just about everyone you meet in this world. I’m a problem whose best solution is death. Then there’s no more need to worry if I ever grow too disenfranchised or bitter and lash out at the poor bystanders.” Roxas’ expression had gradually shifted into a lopsided grin as he kept on talking. “There have already been too many examples of other Crossed who took things too far and eventually met a gruesome end, though not before fucking up everything around them. But let’s ignore all of the other people who also bore this mark throughout history and didn’t try to end the world. Let’s ignore all the other people who had done less than savory things and had a different mark, or no mark at all. It’s easier to focus on one thing and make it either black or white. It’s worked so far, hasn’t it?”

Axel stayed silent for a few moments after Roxas seemed to have been finished with what he had wanted to say. The odd smile was gone from his face, left in its place only a downward tick to the lips. His head was hung slightly to the side, creating an air of indifference that didn’t fit with what he had just said. Again, Axel thought, he looked exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” he heard the words escape from his lips before he could think. They sounded empty, only a platitude that was thrown out when one had nothing better to say. He desperately wished that they hadn’t. Roxas deserved to hear something kind, something warm and genuine. 

“It’s not your fault. I’m used to it anyway. If you want to avoid any more problems though, then I would advise to leave as soon as you can. Nothing ever good comes from associating with a Crossed.”

“No way, man. You’re stuck with me.” Axel gave him a smile that he hoped looked sweet and stood up, taking a few steps towards the other. “I’m not just gonna ignore you during our lectures and I’m not just gonna leave you here all by yourself. Besides, you promised you would help me learn how to do some cool pyrotechnic tricks.” He winked, making sure that Roxas saw him do that now that he was right in front of him.

“I promised no such thing.”

“It was implied.” Axel put his right hand forward, palm up. The other boy looked at it for a few seconds before raising his eyes to meet Axel’s again. “Just as how it was implied that we’re both gonna help each other out since we’re all we’ve got in this messed up situation. So what do you say, are you gonna teach me some magic?” He beckoned a bit with his outstretched hand and Roxas finally seemed to give in as he put his own in it and let Axel help him off the table.

“Fine, but only because I don’t want you to burn this house down. I haven’t been here for long and I actually like this one, so don’t go experimenting with a bonfire inside of it.”

“I cannot be held accountable for any mistakes that I make, but I will try my best.” Axel grinned, nudging the other gently in the arm to get some reaction. Roxas just let himself lean away from the gesture and sway back to his original position like a pendulum. “I promise to treat you to some ice cream after uni tomorrow if I do manage to burn something.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Roxas answered in a deadpan manner, but the small glint in his eye didn’t go unnoticed by the other.

_So sweet bribes could work on this guy._

“Then whenever we meet again, deal?”

It took a few more moments before Roxas turned around to show his back to Axel and went to sit down by the fireplace. He put one hand on the floor and patted it, giving the other boy a clear sign to come join him.

“Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't play with fire, kids. Especially not in wooden houses


End file.
